They were doing WHAT in the nursing home?

[BibleReader]

This story and the question it generates are overtly about sex, but are really about how much we should control each other.

Many years ago, late one night, a police friend of mine visited his 80-something, extremely-senile mother in the senile senior citizens ward of a well-known Philadelphia nursing home. He went to her ward, and saw that she was not in her room. Then he notice that NONE of the very senile senior citizens in her ward were in their rooms. Deeply puzzled, he addressed an inquiry to an attendant. “Oh,” said the smirking attendant, “They’re all in the Multipurpose Room…but I-I-I-I wouldn’t go i-i-i-i-n-n-n-n there, if I-I-I wer-r-r-r-re you-u-u-u-u-u. You might not like what you see-e-e-e-e!”

Walking around the corner to the Multipurpose Room, my police friend opened the door – and there, on mats on the floor, was his 80-something, extremely-senile mother, stark naked, engaging in you-can-guess-what with a writhing mass of about 20 other 70-, 80- and even 90-something extremely-senile old folks of both genders, all of them stark naked. Yeeeeeeeech!

Shocked, my police friend gently waded into the group, gently disengaged his mother, who was sobbing uncontrollably and saying to her son, “Let me go! Let me go!” and escorted her out and back to her room, where she screamed and sobbed.

Then he went to the attendants and flashed his badge and blasted them, threatening them with arrest for permitting Rape and Involuntary Deviate Sexual Intercourse (based on the notion that senile people can’t consent) if they did not immediately disentangle the folks on the floor.

The staff gently broke up the session, and sent the protesting, screaming, crying senior citizens back to their rooms.

After you get done laughing and telephoning your parents’ nursing homes, please post whether the non-senile world should exercise that level of control over such activities by the senile folks.

 

[Lisa4Catholics]

I am speechless Please tell me charges will be filed.

 

[Island_Oak]

What a visual that evokes! I guess that will help keep me on my diet for one day…

I have heard any number of stories of rampant and uninhibited “sexual expression” occuring in senior nursing homes. It would be helpful to get (name removed by moderator)ut from those in the nursing porfession or who have otherwise experienced such settings on an first-hand basis. If I had a parent in an institutional setting who suffered from diminished mental functioning, impulse control and the like, I wold not only hope, but expect that he/she would be protected from activities (their own or others’) that could cause them harm–physical or emotional. The activities described in the OP sound like criminal neglect to me.

 

[BibleReader]

I don’t know, Lisa. It wasn’t my case. I couldn’t hear if charges were filed above the laughter in the DAs Office.

But how about the question asked – Should we regulate folks that invasively? I’m sure that my police friend’s senile mom felt that this guy she used to know as her son was sending her to jail, when he forced her back into her room.

 

[Friar_David_O.Carm]

This is sick and has no place here. It is nothing more than gossip and hearsay. I believe its intent is to shock. Can this be removed?

You ask on question, “but are really about how much we should control each other.”

But then in your example you say that the individual is “extremely-senile”.

Having control over someone who is extremely-senile is like having control over a child. There is nothing morally wrong with it, actually it would be immoral not to exert control and protect this individual.

 

[Lisa4Catholics]

BibleReader:

I don’t know, Lisa. It wasn’t my case. I couldn’t hear if charges were filed above the laughter in the DAs Office.

But how about the question asked – Should we regulate folks that invasively? I’m sure that my police friend’s senile mom felt that this guy she used to know as her son was sending her to jail, when he forced her back into her room.

The DA is really sad to think this is funny:nope: I am a female and I might have snapped in a similar situation,had it been my mom.

 

[BibleReader]

I’m sorry, but this is a real incident, occurring about 24 years ago.

And it’s really about a lot of things that are contemporary issues in society, connected with the right of privacy.

How much should the State regulate personal behavior?

For example, our Church regards use of condoms and the Pill as objectively immoral.

Should we therefore criminalize use of contraceptives?

We used to, in this country. Law enforcement against use of contraceptives dwindled, as public mores changed, until the case of Griswold v. Connecticut struck down all such laws in 1965.

And then there is the Good Samaritan Rule.

In our country, the law is that one is allowed to stand and do nothing and not render assistance if one did not somehow involved in the unfolding tragedy being witnessed.

Should the law control our behavior, and force us to get involved?

The abortion question itself is a privacy question.

Should the government become so involved in human reproduction that it not only bans abortion clinics, and the abortion-inducing “morning after” pill, but also criminalizes use of homemade remedies to mimic the abortion-inducing effects of the “morning after” pill (which are relatively easy to arrange)? When the children we have forced to bear children reach 18, should we then throw them in jail for non-support? (It is such questions which our Supreme Court is ducking, by making abortion legal.)

 

[BibleReader]

The real question in this thread is,

HOW NOSEY DOES GOVERNMENT HAVE A RIGHT TO BE? HOW MUCH SHOULD GOVERNMENT BE ALLOWED TO REGULATE BEHAVIOR?

Should government be allowed to force desperately-lonely, child-like senile senior citizens to not engage in aberrant sexual conduct?

Should government be able to send people using birth control pills to jail?

Should government be able to send an 18 year old who successfully kills her 1 month old fetus by imbibing a homemade abortion-inducing concoction to jail?

Should government be able to force you to render assistance at a tragedy merely witnessed by you?

 

[Trelow]

BibleReader:

The real question in this thread is,

HOW NOSEY DOES GOVERNMENT HAVE A RIGHT TO BE? HOW MUCH SHOULD GOVERNMENT BE ALLOWED TO REGULATE BEHAVIOR?

Should government be allowed to force desperately-lonely, child-like senile senior citizens to not engage in aberrant sexual conduct?

yes, same as children

Should government be able to send people using birth control pills to jail?

yes, they should be illegal

Should government be able to send an 18 year old who successfully kills her 1 month old fetus by imbibing a homemade abortion-inducing concoction to jail?

Hell yes.

Should government be able to force you to render assistance at a tragedy merely witnessed by you?

If you are capable.

 

[puzzleannie]

this one has urban legend written all over it.

 

[BibleReader]

puzzleannie:

this one has urban legend written all over it.

Sorry. This is real. The policeman who forced his mother back into her room was my friend.

But please address the issue: How invasive should government be?

Though one of the folks up above said, for instance, that contraception should be outlawed – in other words, people should be exposed to jail for using contraceptives – I have a problem with government working that hard to right every wrong.

 

[Lisa4Catholics]

BibleReader:

Sorry. This is real. The policeman who forced his mother back into her room was my friend.

But please address the issue: How invasive should government be?

Though one of the folks up above said, for instance, that contraception should be outlawed – in other words, people should be exposed to jail to using contraceptives – I have a problem with government working that hard to right every wrong.

Before,you think about how far the government should go.Please, look where the legalisation of contraceptions and then abortion has taken society.When evil is accepted in one area it becomes accepted in all areas.In opening a can of worms with contraceptions,we were indeed opening a pit of snakes.There is no need to look for proofs in hidden places, just watch the news,God Bless

 

[BLB_Oregon]

BibleReader:

Sorry. This is real. The policeman who forced his mother back into her room was my friend.

But please address the issue: How invasive should government be?

Though one of the folks up above said, for instance, that contraception should be outlawed – in other words, people should be exposed to jail for using contraceptives – I have a problem with government working that hard to right every wrong.

We don’t let children consent to sex, either, so of course the government should not allow the mentally incompetent to consent to sex. After all, they are not allowed to sell their houses or enter into any kind of legal contract. Consensual marital sex would be the exception, IMHO, as consent to a lifelong sexual relationship when one had full faculties can be safely assumed. (This is still an instance where “yes” would be “yes” and “no” would be “no.”)

The government should also be able to regulate that nursing care facilities provide an environment that is safe and appropriate… certainly one that is free from sexual assault. If Grandma confuses you with her long-dead husband once in awhile, be certain that she probably doesn’t know who she’s saying “yes” to in the rec room! (Ask yourself… in a sane moment, did your grandmother engage in orgies? Would she have let you?!?)

As far as contraception goes, that may be regulated without making it a criminal offense… for instance, birth control pills are controlled substances, so you have to have a doctor write a script, and the DEA controls the conditions for which it may be legally prescribed. In this case, the doctor giving out those hormones for the purpose of birth control might risk losing their DEA license. A patient wouldn’t be charged unless they were trying to obtain such drugs fraudulently. Likewise, a doctor who performs procedures that do not fall within therapeutic guidelines might be liable to all sorts of sanctions, professional and sometimes even criminal, while his patient is normally not sanctioned at all. A person who tries to commit suicide might be committed to a mental institution until they are determined to no longer be a threat to themselves or others; I’ve never heard of a country that jails people for that.

 

[Ray_Marshall]

BibleReader:

I don’t know, Lisa. It wasn’t my case. I couldn’t hear if charges were filed above the laughter in the DAs Office.

But how about the question asked – Should we regulate folks that invasively? I’m sure that my police friend’s senile mom felt that this guy she used to know as her son was sending her to jail, when he forced her back into her room.

How can you even possibly even remotely think that that story was funny? If this story is true, and I would bet that it is not, do you really think that that woman would have willingly done that if she had been in possession of her faculties?

People that repeat stories like that remind me of the “Spanish fly” jokes that went around when I was a kid and I’m sure the same stories circulate today with the product name changed to that of the “date-rape” drug.**

I suggest, Bible Reader, that you turn to the page that refers to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”****

We live in an extremely sick society society at a time when the highest and best aspect of being a human being is deemed to be acting like an animal and having sex whenever we feel like it.**

 

[BibleReader]

Ray Marshall:

How can you even possibly even remotely think that that story was funny? If this story is true, and I would bet that it is not, do you really think that that woman would have willingly done that if she had been in possession of her faculties?

People that repeat stories like that remind me of the “Spanish fly” jokes that went around when I was a kid and I’m sure the same stories circulate today with the product name changed to that of the “date-rape” drug.

I suggest, Bible Reader, that you turn to the page that refers to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

We live in an extremely sick society society at a time when the highest and best aspect of being a human being is deemed to be acting like an animal and having sex whenever we feel like it.

Read carefully, Ray. Where does it say that I laughed?

 

[thann]

I don’t have a problem with this subject and the question being asked, if it is being asked honestly.

My problem was with the great detail in the original post – unnecessary and gratuitous. You could have asked the same question without all of the description.

My reaction is that the nursing home is entirely liable for their tacit approval of what was, essentially, rape.

'thann

 

[BibleReader]

thann:

I don’t have a problem with this subject and the question being asked, if it is being asked honestly.

My problem was with the great detail in the original post – unnecessary and gratuitous. You could have asked the same question without all of the description.

My reaction is that the nursing home is entirely liable for their tacit approval of what was, essentially, rape.

'thann

Okay. BUT DO WE WANT GOVERNMENT REGULATING US AT THAT LEVEL? Massachusetts, for instance, criminalized masturbation about a century ago. If your 17 year old is overheard by a policeman admitting to a friend that he did it, should the poiliceman be allowed to place your 17 year old under arrest?

How is this relevant to Christians?

It has to do with fundamental fairness.

Right now, in Canada, and recently in Pennsylvania, Christians have been prosecuted for supposedly “intimidating” homosexuals by merely reading to them Old Testament verses condemning homosexual behavior.

 

[BLB_Oregon]

BLB_Oregon:

… the DEA controls the conditions for which it may be legally prescribed. In this case, the doctor giving out those hormones for the purpose of birth control might risk losing their DEA license.

I need to correct myself. Currently, it would appear that the states, not the DEA, determine standard medical practices in each state, including acceptable uses for controlled substances. Or at least, based on the court fights over Oregon’s medical marijuana and physician-assisted suicide laws, that would appear to be the current situation here.

 

[BLB_Oregon]

BibleReader:

Okay. BUT DO WE WANT GOVERNMENT REGULATING US AT THAT LEVEL? Massachusetts, for instance, criminalized masturbation about a century ago. If your 17 year old is overheard by a policeman admitting to a friend that he did it, should the poiliceman be allowed to place your 17 year old under arrest?

How is this relevant to Christians?

It has to do with fundamental fairness.

Right now, in Canada, and recently in Pennsylvania, Christians have been prosecuted for supposedly “intimidating” homosexuals by merely reading to them Old Testament verses condemning homosexual behavior.

I think you are talking apples and oranges (and pears). The original thread is about regulating what are appropriate protections for the mentally incompetent. These later examples include regulating personal private behavior and public freedom of speech.

I would also want to know what those Christians were “merely reading.” If someone was reading a passage about stoning people with the intent or likely outcome that they would be inciting violence against a third party, that goes beyond freedom of speech. You can’t go around saying, “Someone needs to step up and stone you right now!” even if you use Bible quotes to say it.

 

[BibleReader]

BLB_Oregon:

I think you are talking apples and oranges (and pears). The original thread is about regulating what are appropriate protections for the mentally incompetent. These later examples include regulating personal private behavior and public freedom of speech.

In my view, it’s not so clear that government has a responsibility or right to kick all of those mentally incompetent senior citizens back to the loveless living death of their rest home rooms. What they were doing was objectively immoral, and it was technically illegal for nursing home staff to allow one willing childlike incompetent to do what was done to the other willing childlike incompetent. But it’s still not clear that the policeman should have pulled his mother out of the group, causing her to sob in protest and demand that he let her go. You say that it is apples and oranges. For me, that, too, is not so clear. It’s all the same cops enforcing the same set of laws. It’s just not clear to me.

A hefty percentage of the rest home population gets kicked out of their own homes by children who visit them only infrequently, leaving them incredibly lonely.

I’ll tell you what: I’ll agree that government should lock senior citizens away in their nursing home rooms rather than let them have sex with each other, if you agree that government may lock us in jail if we do not visit our parents weekly, because the need for company is biological.

I’m serious.

You talk like this is clear.

It’s not clear.